An Open Letter to My Followers

I’m trying an experiment with new accounts

Photo by Author

I know there’s a bit of controversy over what I’ve decided to do next, but I feel my options are few.

To start, here’s what I’m faced with.

Numerous writing gurus on Medium say it’s best for a writer to stick with a single niche.

Doing this is supposed to help people who follow you feel comfortable that you will consistently deliver the type of content they choose to follow you for. If they enjoy one article, they will likely enjoy the next one.

But what if they like one article, and then the next two are about entirely different things? Will they unfollow?

The answer, as I’ve learned, is often yes.

If you see your follower numbers yo-yo, this is typically an indication that you are confusing people.

My biggest issue with one niche has been burnout. I tried writing about one subject for almost a year: podcasting. I thought I had a lot to say on the subject, and I did, which led to dozens of articles about creating them, performing in them, etc. However, I eventually started struggling to find new ideas.

On top of that, I learned those passionate about podcasting want to listen to podcasts, not read about them. This meant followers were hard to come by on Medium.

Since I enjoy writing, I needed to move on to something else. I stumbled onto a great publication called Crow’s Feet, which is about the challenges brought into our lives by aging. Since I’m in my 60’s, I thought this would be a good fit.

This went well for a while. I started picking up followers more quickly and became part of a tribe, but I found I was headed in a similar direction to podcasting. I felt I needed to branch out into more diverse topics.

So, what do you do when you want to write about multiple topics?

There’s an argument that no one can write well about many subjects. I don’t buy this. We are complex creatures who can be passionate about several things at once.